There has been a lot of discussion
lately about how we might just have to get used to living with the coronavirus
for a while. The authors of such articles always start out by pointing out that
it will be very hard to get Americans to live with sweeping lockdowns much
longer. Rather than say that this shows the need for leadership that actually
believes what the scientists say, these authors always imply that it might not
be so hard to live with the coronavirus after all. It’s better to just get on
with our lives, and try to get the economy going to some significant fraction
of what it used to be, rather than make an all-out effort to bring it under
control (which doesn’t mean eradicate it, but get to the point where we know
of, and have isolated, just about every infected person and their contacts). It’s
clear that many leaders on both sides of the aisle think living with the virus
is the only viable option. What will happen if we follow this advice?
The Washington Post (which is doing a great job of covering the crisis
– in fact, I’d say they’re number one in that regard) yesterday wrote about this
study directed by Dr. Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota (one of
the other authors was Dr. Marc Lipsitch, who said in early February in the Wall Street Journal that the novel
coronavirus would end up infecting between 40 and 70% of people worldwide, This
forecast is looking more accurate all the time).
The study looks at past epidemics in
the US and tries to predict the course of this one, based on the assumption
that it won’t be controlled in any meaningful way – and I’d say that assumption
is the best one you can make now. In fact, I’d say it’s become de facto national policy not even to try
to control the pandemic going forward – although from initial reports from
Georgia and other states that have opened up, consumers, workers and small
business owners are so far mostly making the decision not to reopen on their
own.
You don’t have to read the whole article
(I didn’t), but if you start on page six with the paragraph that begins “Key
points…” and especially focus on the three scenarios on page seven, I think you’ll
see that there’s no good way forward if we don’t get the virus under control.
Unless a vaccine or a total cure becomes available very soon, we’re in for at
least 2-3 years of cycling in and out of lockdown mode, as waves of coronavirus
keep hitting us. The worst of the three scenarios (no. 2) has the current wave
of infections subsiding during the summer, but it’s followed by a much larger wave in the fall. The only way
that wave will be defeated is much larger lockdowns. And there will be multiple
smaller waves in 2021. This is evidently almost exactly the scenario that
occurred with the “Spanish Flu” in 1918-1919 and the “Chinese Flu” pandemic of
1957-58.
The “best” of these three scenarios is
no. 3. In this, the initial wave is followed by a “slow burn” into at least
2022. There aren’t big enough waves to require anything more than local or regional
lockdowns, but there are infections and deaths throughout the 2-3 years. The
authors point out that this scenario hasn’t occurred so far, but is at least
theoretically possible.
So let’s focus on scenario no. 3. What
does this mean for economic recovery? After all, the whole movement to end the
lockdowns is being driven by the need for economic recovery (which nobody
disputes, of course). With scenario 3 – and certain with scenarios 1 and 2 - I
think it’s very simple: There will be no real recovery for years. You might
say, “Well, we’ll just have to get used to the cycle of opening up and shutting
down.” But that’s not a viable option. Recovery isn’t going to happen until
people are convinced that the worst is behind us, and there are no more huge
surprises (like the current one) on the horizon, that will throw off everybody’s
plans.
Knowing that the virus is out there
and still erupting at various places and times, and that it’s always possible
there will be another outbreak even bigger than the one we’re going through now,
people are simply going to put their lives and economic plans on hold. Who’s
going to commit to going to college if they think there’s a good chance they’ll
never be able to finish? Better to get some sort of low-wage job that will
allow a modicum of happiness, and maybe even raising a family.
And who’s going to start a new company
or build a factory if they think they’ll very possibly have to shut it down for
2-3 months next year, and maybe once or twice the following year?
But there’s a lot more to it. For
someone who’s just starting their career after college – or maybe looking at
where they should go to college with a future career in mind – why wouldn’t
they weigh moving to another country that has had the coronavirus under control
(not eradicated, mind you!) from the very beginning, and where you can be sure
they’ll be able to have a real career? We may well have our own brain drain.
And couple this with the likelihood that countries who don’t ban American
visitors outright will at a minimum require a 14-day quarantine for Americans
upon arrival. Kind of kills the summer family vacation in Europe, doesn’t it?
But here’s the worse part. As our
economic prospects worsen, the US dollar will no longer be considered in some
cases a better store of value than gold – which is why in some cases foreigners
are literally paying the US Treasury to take their money, as they buy bonds whose
price has fallen below par. We won’t be able to borrow in the nearly unlimited
quantities we can today – or even just issue new dollars whenever we want
(which in the end is the same thing as borrowing). So each time the virus
reappears, our options for fighting it and its economic consequences will keep
shrinking.
However, I believe we will ultimately
do the right thing and take the steps that are necessary to bring the virus
under control: near-total lockdown for at least a month, massive testing and
contact tracing, and isolating (by themselves if at all possible, not with
their families) everyone who is infected or has been in close contact with
someone who is. The cost to do this in February would have been a tiny fraction
of what it would be today – but the cost today will be a small fraction of what
it will cost say six months from now. It has to happen, but it looks like a big
fall wave (which the head of the CDC also predicted a couple weeks ago, due to
the coronavirus coming back on top of the normal flu wave) may be what finally
convinces people of that.
The
numbers
These
numbers are updated every day, based on reported US Covid-19 deaths the day
before (taken from the Worldometers.info site, where I’ve been getting my
numbers all along). No other variables go into these numbers – they are all
projections based on yesterday’s 3-day rate of increase in total Covid-19
deaths, which was 11%. Note I stopped reporting percent change in weekly
deaths, since that number is meaningless when you simply project deaths using
the current rate, as I’m doing.
Week ending
|
Deaths reported during week/month
|
Avg. deaths per day during week/month
|
Pct. Change from previous month
|
March 7
|
18
|
3
|
|
March 14
|
38
|
5
|
|
March 21
|
244
|
35
|
|
March 28
|
1,928
|
275
|
|
Month of March
|
4,058
|
131
|
|
April 4
|
6,225
|
889
|
|
April 11
|
12,126
|
1,732
|
|
April 18
|
18,434
|
2,633
|
|
April 25
|
15,251
|
2,179
|
|
Month of April
|
59,812
|
1,994
|
1,474%
|
May 2
|
14,185
|
2,026
|
|
May 9
|
18,889
|
2,698
|
|
May 16
|
23,480
|
3,354
|
|
May 23
|
31,245
|
4,464
|
|
May 30
|
39,202
|
5,600
|
|
Month of May
|
122,819
|
3,962
|
205%
|
June 6
|
48,731
|
6,962
|
|
June 13
|
64,848
|
9,264
|
|
June 20
|
81,362
|
11,623
|
|
June 27
|
101,139
|
14,448
|
|
Month of June
|
343,139
|
11,438
|
279%
|
Total March - June
|
529,829
|
|
|
Red = projected numbers
I. Total
deaths
Total US deaths as of yesterday: 65,782
Increase in deaths since previous day: 1,911 (vs. 2,769 yesterday)
Percent increase in deaths since previous day: 3% (vs. 4%
yesterday)
Yesterday’s 3-day rate of increase in total deaths: 11% (This number
is used to project deaths in the table above. It was 12% yesterday)
II. Total
reported cases
I no longer
pay any attention to the reported case number. It is a huge underestimate of
actual cases, which is probably 25-50 times reported. This is because of the
huge shortage of testing capacity. If reported cases were to be anywhere near
actual cases, we would need to be doing 20-30 million tests a week. I believe
the US has done about 6 million tests since the start of the pandemic.
Total US reported cases: 1,131.856
Increase in reported cases since previous day: 31,660
Percent increase in reported cases since yesterday: 3%
Percent increase in reported cases since 3 days previous: 9%
III. Reported case mortality rate so far in
the pandemic in the US:
Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 161,666
Total Deaths as of yesterday: 65,782
Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases
(=deaths + recoveries): 29% (vs. 29% yesterday)
Let’s be
clear. This means that, of all the coronavirus cases that have been closed so
far in the US, 29% of them have resulted in death. Compare this with the
comparable number from South Korea, which is 3%. Do you think that might have
something to do with the fact that they had fewer than 250 deaths, while we had
over 55,000 deaths as of April 27?
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